Arrogance In Dead Men's Path By Raymond Carver

Arrogance Blinds Even the Most Educated On a daily basis all people encounter arrogance, however not many are aware of the effects that come along with it. An arrogant person is who discredit someone’s else ideas, someone who believes to have superiority over anyone else in any aspect blinding themselves to the nature of situations which makes them unable to notice unspoken feelings and ideas of others. The two great authors, Chinua Achebe and Raymond Carver focused one of their short stories on a specific person and in a single situations in order to offer readers a lesson of how arrogance can blind a person and even cause that person to fail. “Dead Men’s Path” is a short story written in 1972 by Chinua Achebe. It is focused on Michael

As the new headmaster at Ndume Central School in a village of people with deeply rooted local customs and traditional African values, Michael wants to inflict his “modern methods” on his colleagues and the people, showing little importance on people’s beliefs and tradition. His arrogance makes him believe that his modern methods are over the beliefs of the people from the village which result disastrous for both the school and his career. “Cathedral” is a short story written in 1983 by Raymond Carver. It is focused an unnamed man who describes his experience with the a blind man named Robert. The narrator displays arrogance by showing lack of awareness, having difficulty understanding the blind man and even his own wife. Comparing Michael Obi with the narrator, the more arrogant character is Michael Obi because even though both Obi and the narrator are insensitive and have lack of self-awareness, Michael Obi shows arrogance by believing to be more cultured, civilized and to have advantage on

As Chinua Achebe states, “He was outspoken in his condemnation of the narrow views of these older and often less-educated ones”(Achebe 10). This suggest that Michael criticise people who he believes to be less educated making him consider himself as better and on top of them. Furthermore in the story Michael demonstrates his idea of superiority when he says “ ‘these old and superannuated people who would be better employed as traders in the Onitsha market’ ”(Achebe). His arrogance makes him believe that he has an advantage being a young teacher and views older educators as antiquated people who would be better off working in a market. However Michael Obi is not the only character with an arrogant characteristic, the unnamed character from the short story “Cathedral” also demonstrates to feel superior to those who he believes to have a disadvantage in this case the blind men Robert. When the narrator states that, “And his being blind bothered me. My idea of blindness come from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed. Sometimes they were led by seeing-eye dogs. A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward too”( Carver 77). He believes that the blindness of Robert makes him unable to be like him, in terms of being in the same level. Though both characters show arrogance by